3D print the Lotus Temple
A free, printable model of the lotus-shaped temple on its nine-sided base, with the ring of pools, paths and green grounds around it, generated from real map data in your browser.
Free, in your browser. Exports a slicer-ready 3MF.
About the Lotus Temple
The Lotus Temple is the Baháʼí House of Worship in New Delhi, sitting at Bahapur in the south of Delhi, India. Architect Fariborz Sahba shaped it like a lotus caught halfway open. Its 27 marble-clad concrete petals stand free of one another and form three rings of nine around the central hall. The structural engineers were the London firm Flint & Neill, and construction by ECC Construction Group of Larsen & Toubro lasted from 1980 until 1986. The temple was dedicated on December 24, 1986, and it opened its doors to the public on January 1, 1987.
Every Baháʼí House of Worship has to be nine-sided and circular, and the 27 petals are gathered in threes to form the nine sides. The entrance leaves open outward and shelter the nine doorways, the outer leaves turn inward, and the inner leaves stay almost closed around the central hall. At the crown the flower is open, and a glass and steel roof works as a skylight. The temple rises 40.8 meters (134 ft) above the main entrance level. Across the entrance petals it measures 70 meters (230 ft), and across the encircling pools 130 meters (430 ft).
White Pentelic marble from Greece covers the outside of the shells, and the central hall has 1,300 seats. Sahba borrowed ventilation techniques from older buildings to help keep the temple cool: vents in the basement and at the top of the dome let it act as a chimney, and the incoming air passes over the pools around the building. When it was completed, reviewers compared the temple with the Sydney Opera House.
How it prints
Make this print opens the generator on a 600 m square around the landmark. Buildings print at close to true scale, so the landmark grows with the print size.
| Print size | Landmark height | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| 160 mm default | 10 mm | 1:3,750 |
| 200 mm | 13 mm | 1:3,000 |
| 256 mm | 16 mm | 1:2,344 |
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East
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South
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West
- Thin tips on curved petals
- The curved petals taper to thin tips around the top of the lotus. Print friendly adapts these edges to your print scale; Full detail keeps them, so print larger for the finest tips.
- Slow, cool printing near the top
- The petals narrow and curve inward toward the crown. Printing slowly with good cooling helps those tips form cleanly, and layers of 0.12 to 0.16 mm keep the curves smooth.
- One piece with the ground
- The Lotus Temple is joined to the ground in the exported file, and the four-side check found no floating parts, so nothing needs gluing.
- Pick the detail for your nozzle
- In the Buildings settings, set Landmark detail to Print friendly to adapt thin parts and small details to the print scale. Full detail keeps every modeled feature, for larger prints or a finer nozzle.
- Colors
- Buildings, roads, water and ground arrive as separate filament slots in the 3MF. The Lotus Temple takes the building color.
- File format
- You get a 3MF for Bambu Studio, OrcaSlicer or PrusaSlicer. Any of them can save it as STL if you need one.
About this model
The Lotus Temple is one of more than 2,300 landmark models in Mini Skyline. They are made with AI, and each one is checked from four sides in its real surroundings before release. Everything around it is built from OpenStreetMap and Overture map data. If you would rather print the shape from map data, turn off Landmark models in the Buildings settings.
Common questions
Is there a Lotus Temple STL I can download?
Mini Skyline builds the file for you in your browser and exports 3MF, which every major slicer opens. If you need an STL, open the 3MF in your slicer and export it from there.
How big can I print it?
Any print size from 40 mm across. The Lotus Temple grows with the print: about 10 mm tall on the default 160 mm print. For a model larger than your printer bed, Project Mode splits the area into tiles.
Is it free?
Yes. Generation runs in your browser, with no account and nothing behind a paywall.
